On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 04:56:12PM -0500, John Kelsey wrote:
| At 12:53 PM 12/15/02 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote:
| ...
| >I think that a law which re-affirmed the rights to be anonymous, to
| >call yourself what you will, to be left alone, to not carry or show ID
| >would transform the debate about privacy into terms in which the issue
| >could be solved. (At least as it affects private companies.)
| >Companies would be able to do what they want with your data as long as
| >you had a meaningful and non-coercive choice about handing it over.
|
| I think this would help, but I also think technology is driving a lot of
| this. You don't have to give a lot more information to stores today than
| you did twenty years ago for them to be much more able to track what you
| buy and when you buy it and how you pay, just because the available
| information technology is so much better. Surveilance cameras, DNA
| testing, identification by iris codes, electronic payment mechanisms that
| are much more convenient than cash most of the time, all these contribute
| to the loss of privacy in ways that are only partly subject to any kind of
| government action (or inaction) or law.
|
| The records are being created and kept by both government and private
| entities. The question is whether to try to regulate their use (with huge
| potential free-speech issues, and the possibility of companies being able
| to, say, silence criticism of their products or services) or leave them
| alone (with the certainty that databases will grow and continue to be
| linked, creating pretty comprehensive profiles of almost everyone's
| reading, musical, spending, and travel patterns, and with anyone who takes
| serious measures to avoid being profiled having obvious gaps in their
| profiles to indicate their wish for privacy in some area).
Yep. A lot of it, however, freeloads on the government certification
of identity. Without the legal threats, it would be much harder to
assemble the data. (Other things, like credit, also become much
harder. That may become less of an issue as id theft makes credit
visibly a two-edged sword.
Adam
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume
